


Hermeneutics

by WintryMix



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-14 22:52:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2206032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WintryMix/pseuds/WintryMix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: “ 'If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph.' Zach discovers that Chris has been taking pictures of him when he didn’t notice. Nothing creepy; Chris is not a stalker. But the pictures betray the photographer’s gaze--and that gaze is intimate, passionate, and not at all Platonic. And in spite of all the interviews, in spite of all the jokes, Zach had no idea. Now he can’t forget the pictures...and begins to seduce his secret photographer by creating opportunities for more and more intimate pictures."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [satismagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/satismagic/gifts).



“What are you looking at?”

Zach turned to see Zoe smiling at him as she made her way across the bar. She slid into the seat across from his in the corner booth as he considered his answer. 

“Just...old pics. Joe’s redoing his website and wants to know if he can put up a few shots from some old shoots we did.” 

“Ooh, hand them over!” Zoe made grabby-hands across the table.

Zach slid the folder toward her with an affectionate eyeroll. Two film shoots and a press tour had taught him that with Zoe, resistance was futile. He watched as she flipped through the stack. 

“He’s good,” she said after a while, not looking up, still absorbed in the photos. “I mean I’ve seen a million pics of you--not even counting the ridiculousness of your Instagram situation--but these are special.”

“Yeah. Joe’s really fucking good.” 

Zoe looked up with a quizzical smile. “You sound less than enthused about that. Surely you’re not jealous? Hmmm, little brother?” 

He snorted. “No. Totally not. Joe’s awesome, I’m awesome. I love that we both get to do the work that we love.” 

“Then what? Do you think you don’t look good in these or something? Of course--I was picking up on vanity, not jealousy. That does make more sense.” She nodded shrewdly, looking disturbingly like a shrink Zach had seen for a while when he lived in LA. 

“Zoe, I hate to disrupt your analysis with an inconvenient truth, but no, I’m not being vain. I don’t look bad in these, they’re just…” Fumbling for words was an infrequent sensation for him, and a frustrating one. “I don’t know,” he said. “They’re...embarrassing for some reason? I know that they’re great, but they make me feel exposed somehow. I can’t explain it, but I _am_ Joe’s little brother, and when I look at these pics, that’s what I see--a little brother.” 

Zoe looked back down at the stack on the table, and with a manicured hand fanned the photos out like a deck of cards. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I see what you mean, actually.” 

“Really?” Zach felt a creeping sense of alarm at the prospect that he wasn’t just being paranoid. 

“I mean it makes a certain kind of sense, doesn’t it? A little brother is what you are to Joe, and so when he’s shooting you, and directing you, and framing the shots and deciding when he’s got what he wants, that’s there in his mind, at least on some level, right?”

Zach reached over and took the top photo from the spread, turning it around to face him. It was several years old, from a shoot they’d done right after Heroes had taken off. A profile shot, in black and white to emphasize the contrast between his dark hair and pale skin. He was staring down toward the floor out of frame, and though Zach could vaguely remember that the goal had been a menacing, sinister vibe that would play up the Sylar association, the result was admittedly something altogether different: an initial impression of brooding and darkness, yes, but in the tilt of his head and his faraway eyes there was also an unmistakable vulnerability. A softness. A lost little boy. Joe had known that little boy and so he could see him still--and find him with his camera. Fuck. 

He looked up at Zoe. The shrink face was back. That couldn’t be good.

“Anyway, of course he can use them,” he said in his best conversation-ending voice, sweeping the photos back up and tucking them safely into the file folder again, before Zoe could get him stretched out and talking about his core wounds. 

“Not a moment too soon,” she said wryly. 

“Wh--”

“There you two are!” 

Zach looked up to see Chris heading over to the booth. _The beard suits him_ , he thought idly, scooting over on the bench. The prospect of a month of hotel bars was not nearly as unappealing as it ought to have been.


	2. Chapter 2

“Dude, I’m just saying, all the hipster filters in the world can’t change the fact that you’re taking pictures with your phone.” 

One week into the press tour and they’d already had twelve different versions of the “technology is ruining the world”/“no it isn’t” conversation. Tonight’s installment had been brought on when Zach posted a pic of their empty martini glasses on Instagram. At first, Chris had launched into his usual harangue about the banality of social media, but he soon warmed to a more specific critique: that the picture quality of smartphone photos was hopelessly inferior to the pictures he took with his “real” camera. The ensuing conversation had finally exhausted Zoe and Cho’s considerable reserves of patience, and they’d bowed out for the night. 

So here they were, Chris and Zach, back upstairs in Chris’s room, ostensibly so that he could show Zach the photos he’d taken in London last fall, photos he’d assured Zach would blow his mind with their non-hipster awesomeness. But in fact, Zach mused, they’d moved upstairs just so that they could keep blustering at each other companionably for a while longer. It was an outcome that was growing familiar. He looked up from the couch, toward the wet bar where Chris was fussing over ice cubes for his scotch. 

“A connoisseur drinks it neat, Christopher.” A dick remark. But then, needling Chris was so much fun. He’d forgotten how fun. 

Chris looked up with a raised eyebrow, acknowledging the dig. “Oh, well, forgive me for being such a dilettante, _Zachary_. I know how that must grate on an authentic, not-at-all poser such as yourself.” 

“Ah, sarcasm. The last resort of the outwitted.” 

Chris rolled his eyes and took the insult in stride. “Well _that’s_ the pot calling the kettle black, but all right.” He came around to sit on the other end of the couch. “Look...I’m _not_ a Luddite, though it obviously gives you great delight to call me one. Which conveniently lets you dismiss my argument, I can’t help but notice. But anyway, I’m not, I just happen to realize that all of you Instagrammers and Twitterers are acting like your photos are these great works of art when in reality any real camera would produce a better shot than all your smartphone pics put together. That’s all.” He sipped his scotch with the virtuous satisfaction of the just. 

“Oh, Chris. Chris, Chris, Christopher.” Zach could feel himself queening it up as he contemplated the irresistible target of Chris’s smug superiority. “How would you even know? You don’t even have an Instagram account! How can you be sure that the technology’s inferior when you’ve barely even seen any Instagram photos? You’re like old people who think graphic novels are mind-rotting comics, or people who think Facebook is inane just because _their_ friends are all stupid, or--”

“Zach. Buddy. Pal. You and your fellow social media mavens have made poorly lit selfies and black-and-white-for-no-reason pictures of feet damned near inescapable, even to those of us with the good sense to stay off there ourselves. You and your damned filters, your fucking Kelvin and Nashville and Sonora…”

“Sedona,” Zach corrected him automatically. “And I had very good reasons for doing Feet Series IV in black and white.” 

Chris snorted. The scotch had clearly carried him over some internal line of drunkenness, and he was beginning to look a little fuzzy. Zach wondered if he might be about to let the argument go--not an unprecedented outcome, but a damned infrequent one--but then as he watched, a wave of determination seemed to sweep over Chris, and strengthen his resolve to save poor deluded Zach from the scourge of smartphone photography. 

“Look, you just need to see what I’m talking about. Even you’ll get it when you actually see it.” He lumbered off the sofa. “I’m gonna go take a piss. Get on my laptop and find the photos I took in London, and you’ll see what I mean.” 

Zach sighed a long-suffering sigh, only slightly exaggerated for Chris’s benefit. “All right, Pine. I’ll look for your precious London photos. I eager await the epiphany of awesomeness that you’ve promised. And I’m sure there’s no danger at all of them not living up to the hype. None.” 

“Just, see for yourself, asshole.” Chris gestured toward the desk before disappearing into the bathroom. 

Zach walked over to the desk and indulged in a private smile as he opened up Chris’s Mac. There was something endearing about the way Chris so easily sent Zach onto his laptop. The casual intimacy of it. The fact that it obviously hadn’t even crossed his mind to be uncomfortable at the thought. Textbook Chris, though. For all his reticence-bordering-on-paranoia when it came to social media or the world at large, he was absurdly open with the few people he decided to let in. It wasn’t news to Zach that he was on that short list, but even so there was something...warming about the way Chris let him in so easily. 

All right. chrispine → Pictures → … _Jesus fuck, Christopher. Ever heard of a folder?_ Zach rolled his eyes when he saw the morass of random files in Chris’s photo directory, and all so helpfully named things like EF240D61AAF75-18A1AFD2DF80B6A5.jpg. It would take him forever to find anything in that mess. He clicked a file at random. A shot of NYC, inside a subway station, maybe 37th Street? Another file. A pic from the first Trek wrap party--the costume table with everyone’s communicators displayed one last time. Zach could dimly recall seeing Chris with a camera early on that night, but he’d never seen the photos, he realized now. Interesting. Actually, had he ever seen _any_ photos Chris had taken, until tonight? Hmm. More interesting still. Another file, and another. A picture of Chris’s own hand, which gave Zach a thrill of vindication--not any better than Feet Series IV after all, Pine--and a close-up of a cobblestone street that...might be London? But might be any European city, really. Zach rolled his shoulders in frustration, stifling a groan at this needle in a haystack task Chris had set for him. But he might as well save his tortured venting for once Chris came back; more entertaining that way. So, onward. 

He clicked another file, and blinked. And blinked again. Zach leaned toward the screen in disbelief. It was a picture of himself, from just last week. Chris has been messing around with his camera during a break on what had been one of their most exhausting press days to date, from their 48 hours in London. At the start of the tour, Zach had been determined to meditate during their breaks to keep his focus. That had lasted about half a day, after which he’d turned to caffeine. So while Chris had inhaled a couple of turkey sandwiches and bounded around the hotel suite like a puppy, Zach had crashed on the couch with a Red Bull, willing himself to find the inner reservoir of equanimity that would get him through another five hours of questions about his eyebrows. That was when Chris had grabbed his camera and started snapping photos. 

 

  


 

But the image staring back at Zach from the laptop screen didn’t exactly tell that story of a day feeling bored and crispy-fried and hungover. It looked...well. Zach was sprawled across the length of the sofa, his lean legs extending out of the frame, one arm tucked overhead. The throw pillows and cushions were in a state of disarray, and his shirt was rucked up, as if to deliberately expose a strip of belly and the top of his tight white briefs. It was...not a shot framed by someone indifferent to Zach’s physical presence. But what was most arresting about the image, Zach realized, was his face. He was staring into the camera--into Chris’s eyes--with a look of naked want. No pretense, no false front, no dissembling. He was utterly unguarded, and the desire and longing in his expression fairly leapt off the screen.

It was, without question, a pose of seduction. And much, much more effectively captured by Chris than by most of the professional photographers with whom Zach had worked; he could think of any number of photo shoots he’d done that had aspired for this kind of heat but failed to create it. How had it happened? Had he really laid himself out for Chris as if on a platter, and turned toward him with that gaze of palpable longing? And had Chris really seen that tableaux for what it was, and captured it for himself? Apparently, the answers were yes, and yes. Zach found himself shivering at the thought, and the feeling of exposure that suddenly washed over him. He never minded being photographed and was generally up for just about anything at a shoot, even Tyler and his fucking milk bath, but this image Chris had captured seemed to reveal a far, far more private self--a self who, evidently, was prone to looking at Chris like a starving man looks at steak. 

“Enjoying yourself, Narcissus?” 

Zach looked up with a start as Chris ambled over to the desk where he sat hunched over the screen. “Uh. What?” 

“I don’t know what I expected. Of course you’d be staring enraptured at your own face. When I said pics of London, I meant pics _of_ London, not pics of you _in_ London. Where are the photos from St. Paul’s?”

“Um. Couldn’t find them.” So much for his planned rant about the sorry state of Chris’s photo organization. Zach found himself struggling to meet Chris’s gaze. “You know, Chris, I think I’ve had more to drink than I realized. I’m just gonna...crash, I think.” 

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Zach walked back over to this shoes and stepped into them, then headed for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning, all right?”

“Sure, man.” Chris was clearly a bit baffled, but too good-natured to call Zach on his sudden weirdness. 

Zach let himself out and breathed a sigh of relief as he walked down the hall to his own room. Breathing room, that’s what he needed. Some space to figure out what the hell he’d just seen. Had he really looked at Chris as if he were something he wanted to devour? And had Chris really seen that look for what it was, and then pressed the button?


End file.
